THE DAY I DIED

by Ray C. Stedman

Verses 1-14 of the sixth chapter of Romans are the most
important fourteen verses in Scripture, insofar as being delivered
from enduring the Christian life to enjoying it is concerned.
There is a difference between possessing eternal life, which all
Christians have, and possessing that abundant life which the Lord
came to give.

In Chapter 5 we learned why we behave so selfishly, and
frequently so foolishly, in our lives. It is because we have inherited
a selfish nature. We are doing what comes naturally, as the song
says. Why does a peach tree grow peaches? -- because it is a peach
tree. And, an apple tree grows apples because it is an apple tree.
So a son of Adam acts like Adam, simply because he is the son
of Adam. This is why problems, difficulties, wrong attitudes,
and wrong ideas break out in our lives, and we do not have to
plan them, or seek for them. They come naturally. You are an expert
at it, as I am, and any successful hypocrite, such as we are,
knows this. There continually breaks out some problem of envy,
or bitterness, or anger, or impatience, or sarcasm, or lust. It
is part of the nature we inherit from Adam.

We have learned that God has proposed a way by which that old
life may be brought abruptly and completely to an end, and another
Adam put into us -- the second Adam, the Lord Jesus Christ. The
risen life of Jesus Christ, ministered continually to us through
the Holy Spirit, whom we receive without measure when we recognize
Jesus as Lord of our lives, makes it possible for us. Acting from
that life, we can be good just as easily as we are naturally bad
in Adam.

Now, that is a simple truth, but it is a tremendously revolutionary
principle. It is actually easier to be good when we are acting
from the life of Jesus Christ, because the life of Christ is much
stronger than the life we received from Adam -- for God is stronger
than man. Discover this, and you will learn that you don't have
to try to be good. This struggle to be good is our greatest problem
now. But, when we discover this principle, we need no more to
try to be good than we try to be bad now. The life of Jesus produces
goodness as naturally and easily as the life of Adam produces
badness now.

At this point, the inevitable questions come: "Why aren't
Christians living on this level? "If this is true, and this
is what God has provided us in Christ, then why aren't Christians
living like this? "Why is there so little evidence of this
transforming experience of wholesome, attractive Christian living?
"Why is there so much of this barren, baffled, grim, boring,
frustrated Christian living so evident around us on every side?"
It is right at this point that Chapter 6 begins. The first
thing Paul shows us is the attitude that brings defeat in the
Christian life, Verses 1-2:

What shall we say then? Are we to continue
in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died
to sin still live in it? (Romans 6:1-2 RSV)

The question that he asks is really this: "Because our
helpless condition in selfishness and sin drew Christ from heaven
in order to die for us, should we go on being selfish in order
that he might continue to show his forgiving grace to us?"
Is that the attitude we should have? The answer is: "By no
means!" Certainly not!

You say, "Well, I'd never say that to God."
But that is exactly what we all say! Every time a Christian sins,
that is what he is saying to God. Every time a Christian disobeys,
and walks in his own way, he is saying to God:

"Look, you have given me the perfect life of Jesus Christ
to live within me, a life which cannot do wrong and will never
do wrong. If I choose, this life can be my life -- but I don't
choose. I choose, rather, to do this wrong thing, because I know
when I confess it to you, your grace will abound, and you will
forgive me, and then I can go until I choose to sin again."

Isn't that the pattern that we see lived out over and over
and over again? We go on struggling to be good, but choosing to
do wrong and then confessing it. Then we do it again, and confess
that. Finally, we are ashamed to go back any more, confessing
this thing. So we give up, and decide that the best thing is simply
to keep up as good an appearance as possible. As long as we can,
outwardly, be as good as the rest of the people around us, we
are satisfied -- so we become content with defeat.

Now, bless your hearts, God never intended that his people,
his children, should live that kind of a wilderness experience.
We do not need to live that way. Something is wrong when this
is the pattern of life; something is missing. Let me show you,
in one wonderful verse, what God intends the Christian life to
be like. It is simply and beautifully stated in Second Corinthians
2:14:

But thanks be to God, who in Christ always
leads us in triumph, and through us spreads the fragrance of
the knowledge of him everywhere. (2 Corinthians 2:14 RSV)

That is what the Christian life ought to be -- always led in
triumph by Christ. What a contrast to this attitude of expecting
to keep on sinning because we know that God will be gracious to
forgive us. No wonder we are so weak! In the next section, Verses 3-14,
we discover the appropriation of faith that brings victory:

Do you not know that all of us have been
baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were
buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ
was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might
walk in newness of life.

For if we have been united with him in
a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a
resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified
with him so that the sinful body [the
life that we have been living in the past] might be destroyed,
and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. For he who has died
is freed from sin. But if we have died with Christ, we believe
that we shall also live with him. For we know that Christ being
raised from the dead will never die again; death no longer has
dominion over him. The death he died he died to sin, once for
all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must
consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal
bodies, to make you obey their passions. Do not yield your members
to sin as instruments of wickedness, but yield yourselves to
God as men who have been brought from death to life, and your
members to God as instruments of righteousness. For sin will
have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under
grace. (Romans 6:3-14 RSV)

Does that sound complicated: There are really three simple
steps here. But the most important thing about them is the order
in which they come. I want you to see that. I saw a sign the other
day a sign the other day that read, "When all else fails,
follow directions." That is a good sign to hang over the
sixth chapter of Romans. It is strange the way we read the Scripture
-- we try to frost the cake before we bake it! We are continually
reversing the order of the Word of God.

You remember the Lord Jesus said, "First remove the log
that is in your own eye and they you will see clearly how to remove
the sliver that is in your brother's eye," (Matthew 7:3-5,
Luke 6:41-42). We read that, and we say, "Oh, yes, I know
what that means. That means if he will apologize first, then I
will apologize." No, it doesn't mean that! It means: First
remove the log that is in your own eye; start there. Then
you will see clearly how to remove the little sliver that is in
your brother's eye. So the order here is important. First, you
must know what God declares to be a fact, Verse 3:

Do you not know that all of us have been
baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? (Romans
6:3 RSV)

This is what God declares to be a fact. The next step is the
exercise of faith, but faith always rests on a fact. Have you
discovered that? God never asks us to believe something without
giving us a fact to believe. This is the great, solid foundation
of our Christian faith: It rests upon facts. And, this
is a fact: Not only that Christ died for our sins, but that, when
he died, this old life that we got from Adam died with him; it
not only died, but it was buried. This is a fact and our faith
must rest upon it.

Suppose you are having trouble with your swimming and I come
along, and say, "Don't panic now -- just hang on." You
say, "Hang on to what?" "Well," I say, "just
hang on. That's all. Just hang on." But, unless I give something
to hang on to, my words are valueless. Well, here is something
God gives us to hang on to -- a fact that he declares is true,
and God never asks us to believe something that is not true. That
is the fact: Our old nature, that we have been living in, and
having all this trouble with, died when Jesus Christ died. It
became true for us when we believed in him. It not only died,
but it was buried as well, totally put away. Now, let me put a
parenthesis in here: The baptism that is mentioned here is not
water baptism. It is the baptism of the Spirit, by which we were
made part of the body of Christ. Water baptism is a sign of that,
but the essential thing here is the baptism of the Spirit.

The way some people read their Bibles, I am reminded of the
fellows that go around with witching wands, looking for water.
Have you heard of these? They take willow sticks and go around
looking for water -- and wherever water is, the stick turns down.
(Some) people read their Bibles that way. They go through it,
and, wherever it mentions baptism, down goes the stick -- indicating
water. Wherever it reads "baptism," they find water.

But, this isn't water baptism. This is the baptism of the Holy
Spirit, of which water baptism is a symbol. This baptism united
me to Christ, and, the day that I believed in Jesus Christ, God
cut off this old life, and crucified it with Christ, and buried
it with him, and declared that it no longer had any right to live
in his sight. Now get that! This is tremendously important. That
was the day I died: The day that I believed in Jesus Christ, God
made this real to me, and the reason that he put it to death was
because it had absolutely no power in it to do good.

The other day, a friend and I were pushing an old car because
we couldn't get it started. The battery was dead. We pushed it
to a station where the service man hooked on another battery to
the terminals of the old one; then he said, "Now try it."
We switched on the starter button, and immediately there came
a surge of power into the engine -- utilizing the energy of the
new battery. Where once there was no power, now there was plenty.

Now, the trouble in our lives is that we have this old battery
that we got from Adam, but it is without power. God declares it
to be dead, but we simply refuse to believe that it is dead. We
have a certain fondness for it because we have had it so long.
After all, it is the original battery that we got when we were
born. As a matter of fact, it is a family battery -- it has been
passed along from generation to generation, and we hate to part
with these old antiques. We refuse to believe that it is no good.
Of course, we are encouraged to use it by the flood of sales literature
we see, suggesting ways to discover hidden power in our batteries.
Or, we are told that the trouble is, we are not pushing the starter
button hard enough; if we will learn how to push the starter button
harder, we can get it to work -- there is nothing really wrong
with the battery, it is the starter button, the motivating source.
Or, we are told that if we can hook enough cars with dead batteries
together, we can get enough juice to run one of them -- so we
organize committees to get things done.

Across this country this morning, in one form or another, there
are preachers (who should know better) who are preaching this
devilish gospel of "try harder." Nothing could be worse!
This business of telling Christians to "try harder and you
can make a success of your Christian life" was born right
in the pit of hell. I don't know who originally phrased it this
way but I have heard many times someone say, "Well, I believe
that if I do my best, God does the rest." That is the most
damnable lie ever spoken! If you live on that basis, you'll never
get beyond doing your best; and, your best isn't good enough,
and it never will be! As preachers proclaim the gospel of "try
harder," Christians are responding with new resolves to consecrate
their old selves to do their best for God, yet, all the time,
they are totally ignorant of God's provision of a new battery,
available in Jesus Christ, with sufficient power to meet all
the demands of life.

All this begins with the knowledge of an unshakable, unchangeable
fact: Paul says, "I am crucified with Christ" (Galatians
2:20a KJV). I, all my old self, all that I am in Adam, was crucified
and buried with Christ. God finds no good in it, reckons no good
in it, and expects nothing but failure from my old self. We must
do the same.

The second step is consider -- an attitude of faith resting
upon the fact that we have previously seen. Notice Verses 11-12:

So you also must consider yourselves dead
to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Let not sin therefore
reign in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions.
(Romans 6:11-12 RSV)

The King James Version has, "reckon ye also yourselves
to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive to God" (Romans 6:11a
KJV). This is a word which indicates a continuing attitude. Keep
on counting yourselves to be what God says you are! This means
we must learn to recognize the sign of the old life within us,
and refuse to let live what God has declared has no right to live.
We must not presume to find good in that which God says is totally
evil. In other words, stop protecting the old battery, stop protecting
the self life, stop excusing it, and justifying it! This is the
key point. Stop pampering yourself in these matters and making
excuses for what God says is wrong, and, thus, letting live what
God says is dead. There are many excuses: "Oh, I've got a
hot temper, but it is just because I am Irish, you know. My whole
family has this trouble, so there is nothing I can do about it."
Or, "I am troubled with lust, but that is because I am a
Latin." Or, "I am young." Or, "I am hot blooded."
Or, "I am cold blooded." Or, "I am red blooded."
Or, "I am strongly sexed." Or, we are loveless and we
say it is our circumstances that make us this way. Or, it is the
other people with whom we work. Thus, we are continually excusing
ourselves, and giving the flesh reason to live. Every time you,
as a Christian, let enter your thought life any of these things
that God has said are the old Adam in you, you are presuming to
let live what God declares has no right to live. The only life
that God recognizes as having the right to live in you is the
risen life of Jesus Christ. But you cannot appropriate that life
until you give up trying to make the old life suitable. That is
when the death of Christ becomes fully effective to you.

"Well," you say, "does this happen in one great
crisis?" Sometimes, yes. But I rather think that it is a
result of a series of smaller crises, if I may put it that way.
The Spirit of God knows that this thing within us, the flesh,
this self-centered life, is what is destroying us. He takes the
manifestations of it, one at a time, and makes us face up to them.
Any failure to face up to one of these things, as the Lord brings
it to our attention, means no further progress until we stop clinging
to the specific thing that he is talking about. Whenever we put
into action, even in little ways, what God declares to be a fact,
nothing can stop us from the third and greatest step, which is
yielding to, or appropriating, the life of Christ. Look at Verses 13-14:

Do not yield your members to sin as instruments
of wickedness, but yield yourselves to God as men who have been
brought from death to life... (Romans 6:13a RSV)

Notice that order. What comes first? Death: "...as men
who have been brought from death to life." You can't have
life till you have experienced death. You can't have Pentecost
till you have been at Calvary. That is what he is saying.

...as men who have been brought from death
to life, and your members to God as instruments of righteousness.
For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under
law but under grace. (Romans 6:13b-14 RSV)

Here is the great word yield. I know it often means to us "to
give in" or "to give up," as though we were to
sit down, and wait for the Lord to stick a pin into us and make
us go. I find so many Christians miss the point here because they
think that resting in the life of Christ is an inactive sitting
down and a passive waiting for directions. It isn't that. Yield
means "to give over" -- to give over your body, your
mind, your will, your emotions, your physical members -- give
them over to the indwelling secret of the life of Jesus Christ.
You begin counting on him continually to operate and energize
you to do whatever is in front of you to do, whatever it may be,
whether it is tying your shoe, preaching a message, witnessing
to someone, washing the dishes, anything, everything! You need
the life of Jesus Christ to do everything!

How simple this really is! In the same way that you received
his death as sufficient payment for the penalty of sins, and rested
on that fact, so you simply believe that, now, his life is in
you to be to you all that you need in any circumstance:

As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus
the Lord, so walk ye in him: (Colossians 2:6 KJV)

But when you listen to Christians pray, you can see how little
they understand this. We say, "Oh, Lord, give me strength.
Oh, I need strength, Lord." "Give me patience,"
or, "Give me purity." "Give me power," or,
"Lord, give me victory." And all the time the Lord Jesus
is saying, "I don't give anything, I am your strength."
"I am your patience." "I am your power." "Take
it; just take it!" We don't have to sing the song, "I
need Thee, Oh, I need Thee. Every hour I need Thee." No,
instead, we should sing, "I have Thee, Oh, I have Thee. Every
hour I have Thee."

It is right at this point that the Christian life becomes an
exciting, wonderful, wholesome, attractive experience because
impossible things begin to happen. You cannot do, he can do. He
is the God of the impossible. The Christian life never becomes
attractive till you start doing impossible things. That is why
it is so boring and frustrating to us otherwise. But when we yield
to his indwelling life, we begin to discover the bigness, the
greatness, and the glory of God. Life becomes wholesome and healthy
and happy because you are no longer in charge -- Christ is! And
you never know what is going to happen next! But, whatever it
is, you are perfectly ready for it because you are trusting in
the One who indwells you, who is perfectly adequate, and perfectly
competent, to meet every situation -- no matter what it is.

It is not you doing your best for God. It is Christ doing his
best through you. What a difference that is! Here is the whole
Christian life in a nutshell. Right here, in these first fourteen
verses of Romans 6, you have all the truth for victory in
the Christian life. In the following chapters, Paul goes over
this again, taking up the problems that develop in learning how
to apply these things. When we get to Chapter 12, we will
discover we are no further along than we are right here in Romans
6:14.

Chapter 12 begins, "present your bodies as a living
sacrifice to God," and Verse 13 of Romans 6 says,
"yield your members" (that is, your body) "as instruments
of righteousness unto God." That is saying the same thing.
What a difference this truth makes. When Christians begin to discover
the glory of the indwelling life of Jesus Christ, there is a transformation
that is immediately visible on their faces. It is a life of rest.
It is the life we sing about:

Not a surge of worry, not a shade of care,
Not a blast of hurry, touch the spirit there.
Stayed upon Jehovah, hearts are fully blest,
Finding as he promised, perfect peace and rest.

Perhaps you don't understand it all yet, but Paul will go on,
in the rest of Chapter 6 and in Chapters 7 and 8,
to explain more in detail these great principles. However, it
is all summarized right here. This is the secret of the so-called
'great saints' of God. They are common, ordinary people, like
you and me, who have learned this secret. This indwelling, risen
life of Jesus Christ is available to every single Christian, without
exception. We can all be 'great saints' because of this indwelling
secret. One of the common people who became a 'great saint' was
dear Annie Johnson Flint. This is what she wrote in a poem entitled,
Let Us Go On:

Some of us stay at the cross,
Some of us wait at the tomb,
Quickened and raised together with Christ,
Yet lingering still in its gloom;
Some of us bide at Passover feast
With Pentecost all unknown --
The triumphs of grace in the heavenly places
That our Lord has made our own.

If the Christ who died had stopped at the cross
His work had been incomplete,
If the Christ who was buried had stayed in the tomb
He had only known defeat;
But the way of the cross never stops at the cross,
And the way of the tomb leads on
The victorious grace in the heavenly place
Where the risen Lord has gone.

So let us go on with our Lord
To the fullness of God He has brought,
Unsearchable riches of glory and good
Exceeding our uttermost thought;
Let us grow up into Christ,
Claiming His life and its powers,
The triumphs of grace in the heavenly place
That our conquering Lord has made ours.

Prayer:

Lord Jesus, we long for this. We sense its possibilities.
We realize there is more to the Christian life than this constant
cycle of boredom, defeat, heartache, misery, and failure. Lord
Jesus, we ask that we may grasp this secret. May it break upon
us in all its simplicity, and yet in all its beauty, the perfect
provision which you have made for us to live in victory over
every trial because it is your life lived in us. Amen.

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